Tag Archives: exposure

YSPH Study of Environmental Contaminants Associated with Fracking Underway in Ohio

A team of Yale School of Public Health scientists has launched the Ohio Water and Air Quality Study in Belmont County, Ohio. The scientists will collect and analyze water and air samples this summer as well as administer health questionnaires to 100 residents in communities with unconventional natural gas development. The researchers will investigate the potential for exposure to environmental pollutants and whether any health problems have resulted. (more…)

Read More

Are developing heart valves sensitive to environmental chemicals?

Baltimore, MD — Exposure to environmental endocrine disrupters, such as bisphenol A, which mimic estrogen, is associated with adverse health effects. Bisphenol A is commonly found in plastic bottles and plastic food containers. New research from a team including Carnegie’s Daniel Gorelick and Marnie Halpern on the effects of these chemicals on zebrafish shows that embryonic heart valves could be particularly in danger. It is published by Environmental Health Perspectives.

Estrogen hormones are important in all stages of life. They work by binding to receptors inside a cell, which then travel to the nucleus and act on the DNA by turning select genes on and off. But some synthetic chemicals mimic these estrogen hormones by also binding to the receptors. Exposure to them during early development is associated with increased risk of cancers and abnormal formation of the reproductive tract. So detecting such chemicals and identifying their mechanisms of action is of great importance for developmental scientists. (more…)

Read More

Enormous scale of Nile ‘mega lake’ revealed

The eastern Sahara Desert was once home to a 45,000 km2 freshwater lake similar in surface area to the largest in the world today.

A study led by the University of Exeter has revealed that the mega lake was probably formed more than one hundred thousand years ago in the White Nile River Valley in Sudan.

Dr Tim Barrows of the University of Exeter and colleagues used a dating approach based on exposure to cosmic rays to measure the amount of the isotope beryllium-10 in shoreline deposits. Its abundance can be used to calculate how long rocks or sediments have been exposed at the surface of the earth. (more…)

Read More

Solar Fuel Success

UD-developed solar reactor can produce solar hydrogen, but how much?

Last spring University of Delaware doctoral candidate Erik Koepf and research associate Michael Giuliano spent two months in Switzerland testing a novel solar reactor Koepf developed to produce hydrogen from sunlight.

Eight weeks of sophisticated testing at temperatures up to 1,200 degrees Celsius revealed that the reactor’s mechanical, electrical and thermal systems worked just as Koepf had predicted. (more…)

Read More

Previous Studies on Toxic Effects of BPA Couldn’t be Reproduced, says MU Research Team

The MU study is not claiming that BPA is safe, but that the previous series of studies are not reproducible.

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Following a three-year study using more than 2,800 mice, a University of Missouri researcher was not able to replicate a series of previous studies by another research group investigating the controversial chemical BPA. The MU study is not claiming that BPA is safe, but that the previous series of studies are not reproducible. The MU study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also investigated an estrogenic compound found in plants, genistein, in the same three-year study.

“Our findings don’t say anything about the positive or negative effects of BPA or genistein,” said Cheryl Rosenfeld, associate professor of biomedical sciences in MU’s Bond Life Science Center. “Rather, our series of experiments did not detect the same findings as reported by another group on the potential developmental effects of BPA and genistein when exposure of young occurs in the womb.” (more…)

Read More

5 Reasons to Guest Post for Other Bloggers

Whether you’re a new blogger trying to gain some recognition for your blog or a seasoned veteran looking for something new to do, guest posting for other bloggers is one of the best things you can do to both expand your blog and improve your writing. It can be a little intimidating at first, trying to reach out to other bloggers and pitch topic ideas or submit articles, however there’s a lot to be gained from doing so.

1.  Exposure: Writing for other blogs, big or small, exposes your writing to an entirely new audience. This is one of the major factors in helping your blog grow, because when someone reads your guest post and appreciates your writing style or the information you shared they will almost always click over to your blog to see what else you have to offer.

2.  Links: Backlinks on other websites are what every blogger works so hard to gain because they offer another way for people to find your blog. Since most bloggers will allow their guest posters to put a link in the byline to their blog, it’s the perfect way for you to obtain a new link on the web. (more…)

Read More

Adolescent Sexual Behavior Tied to Motion Picture Sexual Content Exposure, Says MU Researcher

Results Important to Parents/Motion Picture Industry

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Young people who watch more sexual content from movies also tend to engage in more sexual behavior and begin sexual activity at an earlier age, according to a University of Missouri researcher’s study.

“We can’t say that watching sexual content in movies is directly responsible for adolescents’ sexual behavior,” said Ross O’Hara, currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Missouri, who conducted the research with other psychological scientists while at Dartmouth College. “However, there is a correlation between the two. Sensation seeking, or the tendency to seek more novel and intense sexual stimulation, does seem to increase in young people who watched more movies with sexually explicit content.” (more…)

Read More

Cell Phone Use in Pregnancy May Cause Behavioral Disorders in Offspring

Exposure to radiation from cell phones during pregnancy affects the brain development of offspring, potentially leading to hyperactivity, Yale School of Medicine researchers have determined.

The results, based on studies in mice, are published in the March 15 issue of Scientific Reports, a Nature publication. (more…)

Read More